Manchester City have made a formal £25.5m bid for the Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o and put together a "stratospheric offer" to make him the highest-paid player in English football.

Eto'o, one of the most prolific attackers of his generation and the scorer of the first goal when Barcelona beat Manchester United in last season's Champions League final, will earn a weekly salary in the region of £180,000 if he can be persuaded to take part in the next phase of City's relentless and financially driven campaign to be recognised as one of Europe's elite clubs.

The capture of such an acclaimed player would be another significant coup for City but it also tells only part of the story, with the manager, Mark Hughes, on the verge of taking his spending through the £200m mark by signing Carlos Tevez to play alongside Eto'o. Both players have informed City that they want to join the revolution and, if everything goes according to plan, City will have taken their summer spending to £80m by the time the players report back for pre-season training.

"Eto'o has a stratospheric offer from City, which would convert him into the best-paid player in the world," Barcelona's president, Joan Laporta, said. "It's starting to become clear that he has this monster offer. He wants to stay but an offer like this is very difficult to refuse. If Eto'o accepts this stratospheric offer, we will have to bring in someone. If Eto'o accepts Manchester City's mammoth offer, we will need another striker."

The man Barcelona want is David Villa at Valencia, once a target of Hughes until it became clear he wanted to stay in Spain, while Laporta said a deal for the 20-year-old Keirrison of Palmeiras was close to being agreed, the reported fee being €15m (£12.8m).

City have remained determined to bring in another established superstar and a £25.5m offer is worthy of Laporta's superlatives, given that the player in question is 28 and in the final year of his contract.

Over a five-year contract Eto'o would earn around £45m which, contrary to what Laporta says, is not as lucrative as some of the salaries on offer at Real Madrid. But it would see him replace Robinho as the best-paid player in the Premier League and might make up for any misgivings the Cameroonian has about joining a club that will not be involved in Europe next season.

City have already signed Roque Santa Cruz for £17m from Blackburn Rovers and, with Tevez, Robinho, Craig Bellamy, Stephen Ireland and Shaun Wright-Phillips all on board, Hughes would then have legitimate claims to boasting one of the most exciting and dangerous attacking line-ups of any club in the world. Tevez's two-year loan agreement at Manchester United officially expires on Tuesday and the Argentinian has provisionally agreed a £140,000-a-week contract to move across the city.

Ironically the first-team place he craves may now be anything but guaranteed but Tevez must also be impressed by City's ambition at a time when the club's billionaire owners in Abu Dhabi are living up to their promise to back Hughes's judgment in the transfer market.

Hughes, who returns from a family holiday on Tuesday, was determined to get his transfer business done early in the summer and has also signed two players from Aston Villa, the England international Gareth Barry for £12m and Stuart Taylor, as a back-up goalkeeper for Shay Given.

The club have resigned themselves to John Terry staying at Chelsea, despite being led to believe for most of last season that the England captain wanted, at the very least, to hear of their plans. However, they believe they have the financial muscle to make Everton back down over the proposed transfer of Joleon Lescott, even if it might cost around £20m.